


Dépaysement

by merle_p



Category: Banlieue 13 (Movies)
Genre: Class Differences, Crossdressing, Feelings Realization, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, Paris (City), Post-Canon, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:14:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21574309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merle_p/pseuds/merle_p
Summary: Dépaysement(French):change of scenery, disorientation, culture shock, the feeling of not being at homeWhat Damien doesn’t say, has no intention of saying, is that he is working himself into the ground not only because he owes it to Leïto and Lola and all the inhabitants of the once infamous Banlieue 13.He also keeps working because as long as he doesn’t stop, he doesn’t need to think about the persistent feeling that’s been lingering in the back of his mind since the day the President let them hit those five red buttons: the feeling that he’s waiting for something, waiting for something to happen, he just can’t quite figure out what it is.
Relationships: Leïto/Damien Tomaso, Mention of past Sonya/Damien Tomaso
Comments: 14
Kudos: 50
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Dépaysement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Spatz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spatz/gifts).



> Thank you for your inspiring prompts, dear Spatz! You did say you’d enjoy anything! You listed a lot of likes that I like! You asked for Damien/Leïto! You mentioned the canonical crossdressing! And … somehow these different components sparked a chemical reaction in my brain. I do very much hope you enjoy the result. Happy Yuletide season!

Damien approaches his new assignment the way he always throws himself into his work, with single-minded focus and the determination to do a better job than anyone else. Except that for once he’s been ordered to assist rather than to arrest, and the stakes are infinitely more personal, and that means that more than ever he feels like he needs to give it his all. 

“You are allowed to sleep, you know,” Lola says, sharing a meaningful look with Leïto over Damien’s head that she probably thinks he won’t notice. 

Damien shrugs, suppresses a yawn, and stands up to get more coffee for them all from the vending machine in the lobby of the newly erected community center.

“There’s a lot more work to be done,” he says when he comes back, juggling the three hot plastic cups between his palms. 

“Sure,” Leïto says and drops three sugar cubes into his cup. “But Paris wasn’t built in one day either.”

“I think that was Rome,” Damien corrects, if only to see Leïto roll his eyes at him in amused exasperation. 

What Damien doesn’t say, has no intention of saying, is that he is working himself into the ground not only because he owes it to Leïto and Lola and all the inhabitants of the once infamous Banlieue 13. 

He also keeps working because as long as he doesn’t stop, he doesn’t need to think about the persistent feeling that’s been lingering in the back of his mind since the day the President let them hit those five red buttons: the feeling that he’s waiting for something, waiting for something to happen, he just can’t quite figure out what it is.

Some nights, when he’s lying awake in bed and staring at his ceiling, he wonders if he’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop; whether, after everything that’s happened, he just doesn’t trust the promises of politicians anymore, doesn’t trust that this time things will be alright. 

Or maybe he’s finally losing it, he thinks, as he’s rolling over onto his side, and tells himself that what he needs is a hobby, or a pet, or perhaps simply a change in scenery. 

He starts by moving into a new place in the 19th Arrondissement, which is half the rent of his old one, and much closer to his work. 

“Nice place,” Leïto says, sounding honestly impressed, when he comes over to help him move some furniture around. 

Damien goes to get him a beer from the fridge, and looks around the narrow kitchen that hasn’t been renovated since 1974. He thinks of his old apartment in the 6th Arrondissement, the gleaming surfaces and white walls, the artwork and the excellent view, and the way Sonya’s mouth had turned down the first time she’d seen this place. 

“Why?” she’d asked and left soon after. 

When Sonya breaks up with him a few weeks later, he is kind of sad, but not terribly surprised, and also a tiny bit relieved. She didn’t like taking the métro to his new neighborhood, she was frustrated that he was always distracted by his work, and she wasn’t quite ready to forgive him for the time a strange man in a hoodie and sweatpants had scaled the wall of the building and sneaked in through the living room window in the middle of the night to watch TV on the couch, scaring her half to death when she’d gone to get some water from the sink. 

“See?” Lola says to Leïto, rather cryptically, when Damien casually brings it up during a shared lunch of jambon-beurre and Orangina on the brand-new park bench across the street from the station. Leïto pointedly ignores his sister in favor of turning serious dark eyes on Damien. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and sounds like he is trying very hard to pretend like he means it. “Are you okay?”

“It’s fine,” Damien shrugs, and it is, except he is still waiting, and he still doesn’t know what for. 

One thing Damien had insisted on early in the process was close collaboration between the police and the community they are ordered to protect. 

In general, this means tedious town hall meetings and expert consultations, frustrating stand-offs over trivial matters, and serious setbacks more than once. 

More specifically, it means that Leïto is a frequent visitor at the precinct, proudly showing off his consultant badge whenever he deigns to enter through the front door. His advice is invaluable – he still has a reputation in the district and an ear on the ground, and he comes to them to share key information, rumors about potential conflicts, and on rare occasions hand-to-hand combat tips for the new recruits. 

Most of Damien’s men have gotten used to working with the important figures in the community, have learned that in this district, their uniform alone doesn’t necessarily earn them respect, and that what the people living here have to say is actually worth listening to. There are others, though, whom it rubs the wrong way that they are expected to defer to barely-grown street kids, to former gang leaders, and to people with a record for killing some of their own, even if one of those is friends with the capitaine and also got a medal for saving the leader of la République. 

One time, when Leïto comes in the door, looking sweaty and disheveled in his sleeveless hoodie as if he’d just been running the full five kilometers from his apartment (and Damien wouldn’t be surprised to find out that he did), one of the new guys is stupid enough to call: “Captain, your puppy is here!”

Damien scares himself a little with the wave of white-hot anger he feels rising in his chest, clouding his vision, prickling in his fingertips. There is a moment when he is pretty sure that he’s about to punch the man, but Leïto simply walks up to the rookie until they are chest to chest and nose to nose, bares his teeth, and says “Woof”, like the crazy fucker that he is. 

Then he proceeds to ignore the guy, who looks like he's about to piss his pants, and strides up to Damien’s desk to dump a heavy torn-up plastic bag right onto Damien’s neatly arranged paperwork. “Here’s the evidence you wanted,” he says, satisfaction carefully hidden underneath his casual tone. 

“Thank you,” Damien says, “this is great,” and Leïto cocks an eyebrow and says: “I play fetch for you, don’t I get a treat?”

Damien shakes his head at him, but he throws him the heavy pain de chocolat that he brought in this morning and never found the time to eat.

“Good dog,” he says dryly, when Leïto catches it with ease.

The other officers laugh good-naturedly at their performance and go back to their work. Leïto takes a bite from the pastry and gives him a tiny secretive smile, and Damien slowly feels the burning rage in his veins subside. 

He still makes sure the new guy gets fired, and from now on he arranges for Leïto to be near the station whenever he’s interviewing new candidates. Seeing them react to Leïto tells him more about them than any of the questions he might make them answer ever could. 

One rainy night in late April, Leïto falls in through his open living room window, leaving a trail of muddy prints on the floorboards and a smear of blood on the window frame. 

“Do I want to know what happened to you?” Damien asks, switching off the episode of Koh-Lanta that he’d only been listening to with one ear. 

Leïto ponders this for a moment, then shakes his head. “Probably not,” he says. “Don’t worry, it’s not going to cause problems for you.” He tilts his head. “I was just hoping you’d let me wait out the rain.”

Damien points his chin towards the kitchen, where the pot with boiling water is rattling on the stove. “I was making pasta, if you would like to eat?”

Leïto grins. “Sounds great.” He sniffs the air. “Smells great, too.”

“Why don’t you change into something dry,” Damien suggests, because Leïto’s tousled hair and the soaked, torn tank top that’s clinging to his glistening skin are doing strange things to his brain. He shrugs a shoulder in the direction of the bedroom. 

“Check the closet to the right,” he says. “Just pick whatever you want.”

Leïto throws him a sloppy salute, and Damien beats a hasty retreat to the kitchen so he doesn’t need to think about Leïto stripping down in his bedroom anymore. 

He’s straining the pasta when it occurs to him that it’s been a while since Leïto disappeared into the bedroom, and that he hasn’t heard from him ever since. 

Leïto hadn’t looked injured, aside from the shallow scratch on his forearm, but Damien knows from experience that sometimes these things are easy to overlook, and he really doesn’t want to find out later that Leïto has been lying on the floor passed out from blood loss the whole time. 

He doesn’t bother with knocking, figuring that Leïto will be able to hear him come, but when he pushes the door open, he instantly wishes that he had. 

For one thing, Leïto is still shirtless, all his tattoos and glorious muscles on display, the shredded tank top flung carelessly to the floor, clearly a lost cause.

For another, Damien realizes with a jolt, what Leïto is holding in his hands isn’t one of his spare shirts. Instead he is studying a very short, very revealing, very pink two-piece dress that Damien had completely forgotten was behind the densely packed row of uniforms and suits. 

Damien makes a rather undignified noise, and Leïto looks up at him with an unreadable expression on his face. 

“Kinky ex-girlfriend?” he asks, a weird twist to his voice, almost angry but not quite. 

Damien feels the heat rush to his face. For a second he considers lying, and if it was anyone, _anyone_ else, he is fairly sure that he would. But there is something about the defiant sincerity in Leïto’s eyes that always makes him want to tell the truth. 

“When I infiltrated Woo’s club,” he says reluctantly. “I needed a way to get close to him.”

He can see the moment Leïto understands what he’s saying. “So you wore this,” he says blankly. “You went undercover wearing this and … “

Damien resists the urge to cover his eyes. “I had a wig,” he says. “A wig and heels and stockings …”

“These, you mean?” Leïto asks and picks up a pair of fishnet stockings from the bed. 

Damien swallows. “Yeah,” he says. “These.”

The silence between them is heavy, the air so thick that he can barely breathe. Except …

“Huh,” is all Leïto says, then he drops the dress and the stockings back on the bed with barely a second glance. Damien watches him walk to the closet, pull out a black v-neck shirt at random and tug it over his head in one smooth, efficient motion. 

“I am starving,” he grins when his head reappears, and Damien exhales a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Food is ready,” he says steadily, “whenever you are.”

“Hey,” Leïto says, falling out of the ceiling onto the deserted desk next to Damien’s. Damien pointedly looks at the gaping hole over their heads. 

Leïto shrugs, unbothered. “I’ll put the tiles back when I leave,” he says. 

“What are you even doing here?” Damien asks. He is pretty sure that the two of them are the only ones in the station at this time of night, aside from the two men on night watch and the cleaning guy who is making his rounds in the hallway outside. Damien hadn’t really planned on staying this long, but he had gotten distracted brooding over the evidence for a rising crack dealing ring and had waved absent-mindedly at his colleagues as they filtered out around six, one by one. 

Leïto does a flip that somehow lands him right next to Damien’s chair, and puts a bottle of Jenlain on his desk. 

Damien eyes it longingly. “Can’t drink on the job,” he says regretfully. 

Leïto shakes his head at him. “It’s after ten,” he says. “You are not on the job. You have simply chosen not to go home.”

Another bottle appears from somewhere in the depths of his hoodie, and he opens both of them by hooking the caps into each other and twisting them just so. One of the caps takes off like a projectile and Damien stretches up to catch it out of the air. 

“Santé,“ Leïto says with emphasis and clinks his own bottle against Damien’s. 

The beer is perfectly chilled and tastes heavenly. It also goes straight to Damien’s head, which may have something to do with the fact that he didn’t have time to eat dinner. 

“What are you working on anyway?” Leïto asks, tilting his head to get a better look at the images on Damien’s desk. 

Damien rubs his forehead tiredly and doesn’t bother to hide the information from his friend. It’s not like they have anything here that Leïto doesn’t already know.

“We are still not getting anywhere on the guy who’s behind the crack dealing gang infesting the area around the train station. We arrest some of his dealers, new ones pop up the next day. The last kid we arrested was twelve years old. And they are all too scared of the big boss to talk.” He sighs. “Usually, I would already be undercover, trying to get to the big guy from the inside, but …”

“But you are running a precinct now and can’t just go off on your own,” Leïto continues. 

“Yeah,” Damien says, not able to hide his frustration. “That.”

Leïto takes a long drink from his beer and gives Damien a speculative look, wiping his mouth with the back of his palm. 

“What would you say,” he starts, “if I told you that I just found out who’s running the operation.”

Damien raises a brow. “I would say that I owe you a favor.” 

Leïto’s mouth moves up in a weird little smile. “What kind of favor?” he asks. 

Damien stares, incredulously. “I don’t know,” he says impatiently. “A big one.”

Leïto nods, apparently satisfied. “I’ll come back tomorrow morning. If you can put a small strike team together, we can have the guy behind bars by the end of the day.”

Damien frowns, annoyed. “Why don’t you just tell me about it now?”

Leïto raises a brow. “Because I can tell that you are itching to go do something, and I don’t want you to run off on your own and get yourself killed.”

He shrugs. “Besides, no one that matters is going to be there right now. If you want to catch the right people in the act, you’ll need to wait for the right time. You trust me, right?”

Damien gives him a sharp look, but Leïto looks utterly serious, as if he’s actually waiting for an answer. 

“Yes,” Damien finally says honestly. “Of course I do.”

“Good,” Leïto nods. “That’s what I thought.”

The guy, when they flush him out of his nest, predictably chooses to run. 

If it wasn’t for the fact that he’s a piece of shit making a fortune selling crack to teenagers in this neighborhood they are so carefully trying to rebuild, Damien would say that he loves him a little for it. 

Because it gives him the chance to look Leïto in the eye, a corner of his mouth quirking up in a tiny smile, and then fling himself from the third floor window, knowing that Leïto is there right next to him. They land on their hands and feet, two big cats on the prowl, and the next second dart behind a parked car when shots are aimed at them from out of nowhere. 

“Shit,” Leïto curses, careening into him behind the small Renault as the bullets shatter the car windows over their heads. 

“You alright?” Damien asks, praying that this isn’t the one day where Leïto’s unbelievable lucky streak finally comes to an end.

“Yeah, fine,” Leïto grins, pressed against him from shoulder to knee. “Just been a while since I’ve been shot at.” He ducks to peek a glance underneath the vehicle, then his head comes back up. 

“You ready?” he asks. 

“After you,” Damien gestures, and off they go. 

In the end, the chase doesn’t last very long. The big fishes tend to be overly confident and lazy, which makes them slow, and this one is no different in that regard.

The guy ends up face first in the dirt, his expensive linen suit covered in dust, Damien’s knee digging into his back while the handcuffs snap shut around his wrists. 

Next to them, Leïto is taking his sweet time stretching out his legs. Damien has a suspicion that Leïto slowed down just a tiny bit in the end, just enough to ensure that Damien got to the guy first. And maybe he should feel annoyed at the idea that his friend was holding back for Damien’s sake, but damn if it doesn’t feel good to be back in the game. 

“You free tomorrow night?” Leïto asks with demonstrative casualness as they finally head back to Damien’s car. They are the last ones left at the scene – his men have already escorted off the boss and his henchmen, and an ambulance has picked up the ones stupid enough to try and step into Damien’s path. 

Damien frowns, his mind still on the operation they’ve busted. “Sure, why?”

"It's Friday, I figured you might have plans."

Damien shrugs. Vaguely, he is aware that other people tend to do things with their weekends, fun things even sometimes. "No plans. What do you need me for?"

“I am going to come over and cash in my favor,” Leïto says, shooting him a look from the side. 

Damien stops in his tracks. “Already?” he asks, concerned. “Leïto, if you are in trouble …”

“No trouble,” Leïto interrupts. He glances around to confirm that they are more or less alone in the street, then he looks Damien in the eye. 

“I want you to put on the dress.”

“What?” Damien blurts out, appalled. “What the hell?”

Leïto raises his chin, a stubborn gesture. “You said you owed me a favor.”

“I meant favor as in saving your life,” Damien protests, “or breaking you out of jail.”

Leïto snorts. “As if you wouldn’t do those things for me anyway. Come on,” he continues, undeterred, “it’s such a tiny thing.”

Damien shakes his head. “I am not going to walk around in public in that outfit for you.”

Leïto frowns. “Of course not,” he says, sounding almost offended. “I’ll come over, you put on the dress for a minute, then you can change again.”

He shrugs. “I just want to see it, that’s all.”

Damien closes his eyes in resignation. “I don’t think the wig survived the coup,” he says. 

Leïto shakes his head. “No wig,” he says. “No make-up. Just the dress.”

Damien fumbles for his car remote in the pockets of his uniform pants. 

“I really don’t understand what you are getting out of this,” he complains tersely, and Leïto gives him a funny look.

“No," he says, "I suppose you don’t.”

He doesn’t even quite know why he goes through with it. He is pretty sure that anyone else in his position would simply refuse, and it’s not like he thinks Leïto is going to put an actual gun to his head if he says no. 

But the thing is, seeing his political beliefs and alliances crumble around him more than once, Damien has come to realize that his moral integrity is one of the few things he can rely on, one of the few things anchoring him in the world. That, and Leïto’s trust and friendship, and he’ll be damned if he gives up both of them over a stupid bet and a skimpy dress. 

He expects Leïto to drop in via the balcony, his usual route of access, but instead the doorbell rings at eight sharp, and he has the rare pleasure of watching Leïto walk up a set of stairs like a normal person for once in his life. He’s carrying a bottle of red that he pushes into Damien’s hands the moment he walks in the door as if he’s trying to get rid of an active grenade. 

Damien takes the wine and tries not to think too much about what the hell is going on. 

“Okay,” he asks, instead of asking any of the questions that are actually on the tip of his tongue. “Do you want me to …?”

He points vaguely towards the bedroom, and Leïto makes a gesture somewhere between a nod and a shrug that Damien chooses to interpret as a yes. 

“Well,” he says, setting the wine bottle down on the side table, “make yourself at home. There’s a corkscrew in the kitchen.” He coughs. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”

The dress and the stockings are already on the bed, waiting for him. His usual boxer briefs are not going to work with the dress, so he digs through his drawer for the g-string he keeps around for these kinds of situations. The stockings feel a bit strange against his unshaven legs, his skin already starting to itch, and the dress is a little loose in the front: the padding he’d worn got lost at the crime scene together with the bra, and anyway, this is where he draws the line – Leïto wants to see the dress, and the dress is what he’s going to get. At the last minute, he chooses to dig through the closet for the heels, although he isn’t quite sure why. 

“You can come in now,” he calls, his voice as steady as his nerves permit. The doorknob turns almost immediately, and Damien wonders if Leïto has been standing on the other side the whole time, just waiting for his sign. 

Leïto carefully closes the door behind himself, and only then turns around to look at Damien. For a moment, he simply stares, looking a little like he’s been slapped, then he opens his mouth, but no sound comes out.

Damien shifts from one foot to the other and resists the urge to cross his arms in front of his bare midriff. 

“If you want to make fun of me, you better get on with it,” he says tersely. 

Leto shakes his head with something akin to disappointment. “You really still think that is what this is about?” he asks quietly, and when he looks up, his eyes are blown so wide with desire that Damien would think he was high if he didn’t know him any better.

Oh, he thinks, the intensity of that gaze hitting him like a brick to the gut. Oh. 

He opens his mouth, although what to say he doesn’t know, but he never actually gets a word out, because Leïto chooses this moment to step close, wrap a hand around the back of his neck and pull him in. His movements are slow, deliberate, and Damien realizes that he is giving him the chance to step away. 

Except Damien doesn’t want to escape. 

Even though he knows what’s coming, somehow the feeling of Leïto’s mouth against his still takes him by surprise. There is a strangled groan that must have been coming from him, because he can feel Leïto shudder a little against him in response. 

Then they are kissing for real, open-mouthed and wet, their fingers grappling for purchase on bare skin with a sense of desperation as if they are both dangling from a building and holding onto the ledge for dear life. 

Finally, Leïto breaks away, gasping for air in a way he doesn’t after a sprint across the rooftops of Paris, and for a long moment just looks at him. 

“Gorgeous,” he finally says, his voice gone gravelly in a way that Damien feels down to his toes, but there’s something about it that also sparks a tiny flame of unease and doubt. 

When Leïto tries to swoop back in, Damien stops him with a hand to the chest. 

“What is it?” Leïto asks, sounding a little dazed, as if he has a hard time remembering where he is. 

“If …” Damien closes his eyes for a moment. “If this is just about the dress …” He breaks off, not sure how to continue, except that he knows with certainty that he’ll need to stop things right here if this is really what this is. 

Leïto blinks, as if he’s just slowly coming back to himself. Then he actually rolls his eyes. “You know,” he says dryly, “for a super-cop you can be pretty slow.” 

And then he’s on him again, tugging on the collar of the dress until the buttons pop, pulling it up Damien’s body and over his head as if he can’t get rid of it quickly enough. Damien hears fabric tearing, but his brain doesn’t have enough time to categorize the sound, because the next moment Leïto drops the top and sinks to his knees, pushes up the skirt, slides a hand into the thong, and then chokes himself in his rush to get his mouth on Damien’s cock. 

“Fuck,” Damien curses and can’t stop his hips from jerking forward, once, twice, almost losing his balance in those ridiculous heels. 

He steadies himself against Leïto’s shoulders and kicks off the shoes without much care. When both of his feet are back on firm ground, he leaves his hands where they are, allows himself to run his fingers up Leïto’s neck and the sides of his face until they settle in Leïto’s hair. He tugs once, gently. Leïto groans in response and takes him in deeper. 

Damien stops being careful and starts fucking Leïto’s mouth in earnest, dragging his palms through Leïto’s dark spikes, digging his nails into his scalp, trying not to lose his mind over the way Leïto takes it all.

Eventually Leïto slows down and pulls his mouth of Damien’s still achingly hard cock, pressing his face against his groin. Damien pets Leïto’s hair and tries to get his breathing under control, his heart hammering wildly against his ribs. 

“I don’t want to stop,” Leïto says against his hipbone, his voice hoarse and oddly quiet. 

“But I want you to fuck me even more.” 

He shifts his head and glances up at Damien.

“Would that be okay?”

Damien makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and wills himself not to come right here and there all over Leïto’s hopeful, trusting face. 

“Yeah,” he says finally, his palm cradling Leïto’s jaw. “Yeah, that would be okay.”

Damien wakes up around noon to an empty bed and has about two seconds to feel sorry for himself before he hears noises coming from the kitchen. He slips into a pair of boxers and an undershirt – just in case, because fighting bare-ass naked is not fun – then goes to investigate. 

Luckily, fighting turns out to be not necessary. Leïto is at the stove, moving things around in a pan, wearing only a pair of Damien’s shorts that ride dangerously low on his hips. From the ingredients scattered around the kitchen, Damien deduces that he’s making a mushroom omelet with cheese and herbs. The air smells of warm butter and fresh coffee. His mouth waters for more than one reason. 

“I didn’t know you could cook,” he says. Leïto throws him a grin over his shoulder. 

“Oh, I can cook,” he says. “I just have never had much access to the ingredients.”

He abandons the pan to pick up the grumbling percolator and pours steaming coffee into a waiting cup.

“For you,” he says. Their fingers brush when he hands over the coffee, and Damien has to hide his face behind the cup to cover the irrational blush he feels blooming on his cheeks. 

He sits down at his tiny kitchen table and watches Leïto expertly flip the second omelet, turn off the heat, and lift the pan off the hot stove to slide the eggs onto a waiting plate.

Leïto carries their food to the table, goes back to dig around the kitchen drawer for the appropriate cutlery, and then just stands there, staring down at the forks in his hand. 

“Sorry about ripping the dress,” he suddenly says apologetically, and Damien wonders if he thinks he has more to apologize for than just ruining a cheap dress. 

He reaches out a hand and is pleased to see that Leïto comes to him without hesitation, linking their fingers together. “I don’t give a fuck about the dress,” Damien says firmly, putting some weight behind the words.

“Yeah, me neither,” Leïto laughs, relieved, and leans in to press a kiss against Damien’s lips, gentle and careful with just a tiny bit of tongue at the end. 

“Well, dig in,” he finally says and sits down in the second chair, pushing one of the plates closer to Damien. 

“What are you waiting for?”

“Nothing,” Damien says, with a quiet smile. He reaches for his fork and doesn’t mind that Leïto won’t understand that he’s talking about more than just the food. 

“Really, nothing at all.”


End file.
